page_title: Economy of Chicago
section_title: Historic highlights
hierarchical_section_title: Economy of Chicago / Historic highlights
caption_attribution_description: Chicago Board of Trade Corn pit. 1993
context_page_description: Chicago and its suburbs, which together comprise the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is home to 36 Fortune 500 companies and is a transportation and distribution center. Manufacturing, printing, publishing, insurance, transportation, financial trading & services, and food processing also play major roles in the city's economy. The total economic output of Chicago in gross metropolitan product totaled US$703.9 billion in 2018 making Chicago equivalent to the 20th largest economy in the world just surpassing the total economic output of Switzerland.
context_section_description: Before it was incorporated as a town in 1833, the primary industry was fur trading. In the 1770s, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, the area's first resident and Haitian-born fur trader, established a fur trading post in the area which later became known as Fort Dearborn, along the bank of the Chicago River, where he traded until relocating again in 1800.
  The American Fur Company, established in 1808 by John Jacob Astor to compete with the powerful Canadian North West and Hudson Bay companies, practically took control of the fur trade in the United States following the War of 1812. It quickly became known for its ruthless practice of buying out or destroying the competition, as most private traders in Chicago soon found out. It appointed John Kinzie and Antoine Deschamps as its first agents in northern Illinois, and they reported to the company's headquarters on Mackinac Island. Their field of operations covered northeastern Illinois and the Illinois River. In 1819, Charles H. Beaubien was brought in to assist Kinzie and eventually became head of the outfit. Gurdon S. Hubbard replaced Deschamps in 1823 but soon went on his own by purchasing all interests of the company in Illinois.
caption: Chicago Board of Trade
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